Last Day

Readers!! I must say I am quite upset with you. Really. I am. It’s a true tragedy when I’ve composed so many blogs on a number of extremely amusing, interesting and mind-blowing topics and I’ve received NO comments on them. None!!

Didn’t you chuckle at our mishaps in London, where our family of three was stuck without passports and had to try maneuvering a stroller through a disastrous “system” of tubes, trains, automobiles and red tape? Including an “explosion” of epic proportions that had my husband changing a diaper on a toilet seat in the gent’s loo at Arsenal London*?

Wasn’t it hilarious when I told you about our first experience flying with a baby?

 
Manic stimuli overload.

Were you not blown away by my pictures and stories of fall in the beautiful Luxembourg Müllerthal??

Was my story of how I spent an entire day in the Luxembourg ER with my mother not informative?

Did you not enjoy another Ultimate Thanksgiving?

Was your heart not even warmed by a Very Lovely Christmas, with all the joys of the season?

No, these blogs have not been published. But that’s certainly not due to any inaction on my part. I come up with at least one blog a day. If not several.

They are witty.
They are amazingly well-written.
They contain super high-quality photos.

And at a time when more people are capable of higher thought than ever before, I would have hoped that you, my readership, would have been able to read these blogs despite the fact that they weren’t published here.

One word: POOR.

BUT there’s hope for you. I am an extremely forgiving person, and over the last few days leading up to Christmas and New Year’s I have placed more and more emphasis on grounding myself spiritually so as to attract more energy, mental fitness and time to write blogs and actually publish them here. So as to help YOU, my poor reader, read them without over-extending your psychic powers.

That’s right, beginning NOW (2012!), you will once again have the option of experiencing my wonderful work simply by visiting this website.

Revolutionary, isn’t it?

So on to today’s topic.

Today, besides being the first Monday of 2012 (which is going to be an excellent year, by the way!!!) is a very special day for me. It may not be a big deal to anyone else, but for me, it’s huge.

Today is my last day at home after 11 months of maternity leave.

WOW. Nearly 11 months ago, on February 7th, 2011, I wrote this blog about the first day of my maternity leave. So it seems imperative that I write a blog on my last day.

Although I am terrible at saying goodbyes, I’m really super proud of myself for how the last weeks of this amazingly unique phase in my life have wound down. Knowing my track record for the sentimental and melodramatic, I fully expected, when I sat down to write that blog in February, that the last days of December would be filled with lots of tears, bellyaches, hyperventilation, desperate clinging to my child, and basically a complete journey to bonkers-ville, strait-jacket included. But they haven’t been. I’ve been writing new affirmations, cleaning out my closets (literally and figuratively), breathing deeply, envisioning, and gathering up amazing momentum for the new year and for a new time of being me. I’m excited to go back to work. I’m excited to pick up Baby Lovely from her crèche** in the evenings and spend some really high-energy quality time with her before she goes to bed. I’m excited to flex my mental muscles again and to finally, FINALLY design some new Excel spreadsheets***. And I thank the divine timing of the universe for laying this all out so that the beginning of my time back at work naturally coincides with the beginning of the new year, so that the whole world is gaining momentum with me.

Fabulous.

And of course I’m hoping that my return to work will also allow me a return to blogging. Yes, I realize that I will have to spend more evenings getting things done around the house due to the fact I’ll be working full time, rather than sitting at the computer, but I am optimistic that a new structure to my day may make it possible to spend more time blogging. I also received an amazing camera for Christmas, and as we all know that the best blogs also have the best photography, I’m hoping that the two will go hand in hand. It’s certainly a wonderful prospect, isn’t it?

With all of that said, I do have to admit that all of this positivity and hopefulness has gotten me quite exhausted (or maybe it’s the fact that we’re still not sleeping through the night?). So I have decided to take one of the LAST opportunities I will have to take a morning nap.

[Sigh] I guess I am just a tad sentimental that my maternity leave is over.

Nap time will do that to you.

 

*For those of you who are not so incredibly versed in British English as I, that means he changed the diaper on a toilet seat in a men’s bathroom at a train station near a stadium for a major league soccer team. If there would have been a soccer match that day, it is fully possible that we would have been eaten alive by hooligans.

**Day-care center for young children in Luxembourg.

***Yes, I miss Excel. I can admit that because I’m not in high school anymore and trying to be popular is, thank goodness, a relic of the past.